


Stay

by thedarkswan



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kissy Faces, Nurse Lorcan, Soft Lorcan Salvaterre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25623082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedarkswan/pseuds/thedarkswan
Summary: “Jesus, Elide.” At the sound of his voice, her head turns and she’s so pale, with the exception of two feverish spots of color high on her cheeks. Crouching down, Lorcan does his best to shift her gently into a sitting position. She lets out a quiet moan as he presses his hand to her forehead. “You’re burning up, baby.”
Relationships: Elide Lochan/Lorcan Salvaterre
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	Stay

Lorcan wakes with a start, heart thundering in his chest. The room around him is still dim, with predawn light just beginning to filter in through his blinds. At first, he assumes that it must have been an already forgotten dream that woke him, but a buzzing comes from across the room. His phone vibrates angrily, once, twice, on top of his glass top desk. Grumbling to himself, he rolls out of bed and stalks over to silence the offending piece of technology. 

Before he gets the chance to turn it off, he skims the notifications lighting up the screen. His breath catches in his throat at what he sees there. 

_Missed Call: Elide - 5:15 AM_

It has been weeks since he had last seen her, let alone spoke to her. He knew she must have been at Aelin’s and Rowan’s party last night; he had not been invited specifically because Elide would be there. He debates with himself momentarily, before hitting the Call Back option. 

The line rings, once, twice, seven times, cutting to her voicemail message. Despite knowing better, he allows himself the luxury of listening to her voice. “Hi, this is Elide. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon. Thanks!” He ends the call before her voicemail can begin recording. 

Her voice is bright and cheerful. It makes Lorcan’s stomach churn with regret. He had gotten better, these last few weeks, at schooling his emotions into nothing. Now, with her voice fresh in his ears, he is powerless to stop the painful squeeze in his chest. Turns out, it is a lot harder than he thought to make himself fall out of love. 

His fingers twitch over the phone as he considers his options. Maybe she called accidentally; it was probably just a butt dial. Unless… What if she was in trouble? What if she needs him? The uncertainty is enough to drive him into action. He quickly pulls on a pair of sweats and a shirt, stuffing his feet into the closest pair of sneakers. In his head, he repeats to himself that he’ll just drive over to check on her, in case something is wrong. 

On his way out the door, a set of keys hanging from a hook grabs his attention. They are the spare set Elide had given him, months ago. She hadn’t asked for them back when she’d broken up with him, so he hadn’t bothered returning them, knowing full well that made him such an asshole. He thanks whatever dark god watched over him that he was that asshole, shoving them in his pocket and dashing out the door to his car. 

* * *

As Lorcan pulls up to her apartment, he notes that her car is parked neatly in its designated spot. Anticipation and anxiety have him jogging up the short flight of stairs to her second-story apartment, wrapping his knuckles against the door. Nothing but silence follows. He tries again, knocking a bit louder. More silence. He is too agitated to hesitate as he slips his spare key into the lock, spinning the deadbolt. It slides neatly back. If the door is locked, she either already came home or never came home. 

He pushes into the apartment and a heinous thought suddenly clangs through him. What if a man is here? What if the missed call was really just a mistake and now he’s going to walk in on the love of his life in bed with another man? Nausea threatens, his throat growing tight.

“Elide?” he calls, not bothering to be quiet. Whether she’s alone, or not, he doesn’t want to terrify her. Or worse, surprise her in an… intimate… moment. 

Glancing around, he notes that the apartment is a disaster. A pile of shoes is shoved into the doorway of a half-closed closet. The dining table is littered with unopened mail. The couch looks like it is currently serving as a de-facto laundry hamper. A brief look into the kitchen reveals a sink full of dirty cups, but no plates. 

Is she eating at all? Lorcan wonders to himself. A sick part of him hopes that she has been as miserable as he has been since their break-up. 

“Elide?” he tries again and, this time, there is a sound from the direction of her bathroom. 

The door is ajar, so he pushes in without knocking. The scene he finds nearly stops his heart. 

Elide is slumped against the wall, her body curled in a fetal position so her head can rest on the edge of her bathtub. Her hair is pulled back into a messy knot and the make-up smudged around her eyes gives her a ghostly appearance. The scrap of a dress she is wearing looks damp, like she’s either sweat through it or she showered in it. 

“Jesus, Elide.” At the sound of his voice, her head turns and she’s so _pale_ , with the exception of two feverish spots of color high on her cheeks. Crouching down, Lorcan does his best to shift her gently into a sitting position. She lets out a quiet moan as he presses his hand to her forehead. “You’re burning up, baby.” The pet name rolls off his tongue before he can stop it. 

“Lor? You came?” Her voice is barely a croaking, painful sounding rasp. “I’m sorry… I didn’t know who else to call... ”

He shushes her as gently as he can, tucking a wild piece of dark hair behind her ear. “You can always call me. Always.” His fingers go to her neck, seeking out her pulse. It pushes back against them, strong enough, but far too quick for someone laying on the floor. “We can talk later.” Elide makes a groan of agreement, her body going limp on the floor again. Rummaging through her cabinets, he finds a washcloth. He passes it beneath icy tap water before wringing it out and turning to press it to Elide’s neck. She moans again, but this time in relief. “Can I carry you to your bed?”

Her head shakes once in vehement disagreement. “Too… nauseous.” 

“Ok, ok. I think you’re sick, Elide. Really sick.” Another sound of agreement, but she makes no attempt to move from her spot on the floor. “I’m going to get you some water and make a call.” 

Before he leaves, he rolls up a towel and moves to where she’s curled on the floor. “Lift your head.” She compiles, her eyes blinking open dazedly. He tucks the towel beneath her so she can use it as a pillow. Her dark eyes stay trained on his face and he can’t help but reach out and gently rub the backs of his fingers down her cheeks. 

Her eyes flutter closed again as she murmurs, “Missed you.”

* * *

Lorcan calls Gavriel, the only person he knows that has any sort of medical training. Gav agrees to come to Elide’s to check that she doesn’t need more urgent medical attention. 

While he waits for Gav’s arrival, he brings a large glass of water to Elide, who is still slumped over in the bathroom like a ragdoll. He manages to get her into a sitting position, where she greedily gulps down the water, leaning the majority of her weight against him. 

When she keeps down the fluids, he makes the executive decision to move her to her bedroom, hoisting her into his arms. She doesn’t protest once, further proof to him that she must be quite ill. Her body is wracked by shivers as he peels the damp dress off of her, ignoring modesty in favor of her current needs. It’s not like he hasn’t seen her body before. He finds a sweatshirt (one of his) in her closet and a pair of leggings. 

“Arms up, Elide.” She raises them on command, swaying a bit from her seated position on her bed. The sweatshirt drowns her, but there’s a moment after he’s pulled her head through that a drowsy smile plays out on her face. “You’re a little thief, you know that?” he jokingly asks. 

“Mhmmm,” she hums. 

Crouching in front of her, he commands, “Stand.” She does, bracing her hands on his shoulders, stepping one foot into the leggings, then the other. Lorcan helps her shimmy them up her legs as best he can. 

Once she’s in her leggings, he tucks her beneath the comforter, then settles in beside her to wait for Gavriel. He does his best to ignore the way his chest constricts when she presses her face against his abdomen and drifts off back into her fevered sleep. 

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Elide is in Lorcan’s lap like a child, while he lists her symptoms to Gavriel over her head. Gavriel drops his EMT kit just inside the door, snapping on rubber gloves and moving to where the pair of them are seated on the bed. 

Elide curls into him, her face pressing into the crook of his neck. She makes a quiet keening noise as she tries to get as far from Gavriel’s hands as she can. Holding her like this, he can feel the way her ribs are more pronounced beneath the fabric of the sweatshirt, his finger slotting easily into the divots between them. 

There is a painful squeeze in his chest, something bordering between grief and desperation swirling inside him. He still wants to be mad. His anger is more than justified. He wants to yell at her and slam doors and hurt her the way she hurt him. Instead, he grips her tighter, pulling her more securely into his lap. 

“I’ve got you Elide. It’s ok. It’s just Gavriel.”

Gavriel watches the whole exchange, quirking an eyebrow up, a pointedly silent question in his eyes. When Lorcan makes no acknowledgment of it, Gavriel rolls his eyes and reaches for Elide. “Come on, love, let me just check your lymph nodes,” he murmurs to her, trying to be soothing, like he’s speaking to a frightened animal. 

“I assume she was drunk last night, but it seems like she’s gotten a virus or food poisoning or something, too,” Lorcan offers to him. He adjusts Elide so Gavriel can gently press his fingers into the soft flesh of her throat, feeling beneath the surface. Elide whimpers, but allows it. 

When Gavriel leans back, Lorcan looks at him expectantly. “Her lymph nodes feel fine, so I’d err on the side of food poisoning. She’s got a fever and she’s small, so she’ll dehydrate easily. Keeping her fluids up and something to keep the fever at bay are going to be the best course of action for now.” A pause in his words brings a dark look to Lorcan’s eyes, daring his friend to say what he’s thinking. “Why are you here, Lorcan? She’s not your responsibility anymore.”

Lorcan bares his teeth at Gavriel, almost growling. “She called me.” He feels Elide tense slightly in his arms and he tightens his arms around her in response. “She needed me.”

Gavriel raises his hands, both defensive and apologetic. “I get it, man, I do. Just… Be careful. It’s taken this long for you to start to get over her. I don’t want to see you back in that place.” Small fists tighten imperceptibly against Lorcan’s chest. “I was at the party last night. She was certainly not moping over you. She was quite visibly hanging all over some other asshole.”

The light in the room seems to gutter, like a phantom shadow spreading through Lorcan’s field of vision. Whatever Gavriel sees on Lorcan’s face in that moment has the man taking a half stride back. “I’m just trying to protect you, Lorcan-”

“Get out.” Lorcan’s voice is deadly calm. “Leave the medicine and get the fuck out, Gav.”

The other man stills, then turns to his bag, digging through and pulling out a few small pill packs, setting them on the dresser. “If her fever worsens, she’ll need to go in. If her vomiting continues, she’ll need to go in. She doesn’t have enough weight on her to survive too much more of this.” His voice is clinical and he turns, holding out two small pink pills in his fingers. “Elide, you need to take these. Open up.”

As Elide chokes down the pills, Gavriel looks like he is contemplating pressing Lorcan further. However, he must think better of it because he gives his friend a nod, grabs his bag, and backs out of the room. There’s some shuffling in the kitchen, then the external door opens and closes. 

* * *

For a long while, Elide sleeps. As daylight breaks outside and fills the apartment with light, Lorcan busies himself with cleaning and tidying. The apartment is familiar enough to him, he knows where most things belong. Periodically, he steps into the bedroom to feel her forehead for a climbing fever, leaving a large Tupperware bowl beside her in case she needs to vomit again. 

One hour passes in peace, then two. At the start of the third, Elide’s forehead is no longer burning beneath his palm and her eyes blink open when he pulls his hand back. 

For a few beats, they stare at each other in silence. Elide breaks the silence. 

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“What time is it?”

Lorcan shrugs in response. “Daytime.”

She makes a huffing sound that could be a laugh. “Always a man of many words.”

He wants to smile, he does, but he can’t. Not with the sudden weight of their shared history bearing down on him, now that Elide is out of immediate danger. “How do you feel?”

Instead of answering, she reaches out, her fingers catching on his shirt, and she tugs him to sit on the bed. “Alive.” A pause, then, “What Gavriel said… About the party last night…”

“Elide. Please. Don’t.” He can’t. His shriveled soul is already in eviscerated shreds.

“It was nothing. He was nothing.”

Suddenly, Lorcan is furious. The anger plows into him like a truck, so forceful he shoots to his feet, ripping her hand from the fabric of his shirt and pacing away from the bed. All the words he’s kept pent up since she broke up with him come pouring out of him. 

“No, you know what, no, Elide. You don’t get to do this. You made it very clear that I don’t get to care what you do anymore. So, no you don’t get to be pitiful and sympathetic. You don’t get to tell me that you didn’t mean it, because you and I both know you fucking meant it. I _love_ you and that’s on me to deal with. But you can’t use that against me like a weapon. It fucking hurts.” He whips around to face her, finding wide, unblinking eyes staring back at him, silver lining her lower lids. His voice lowers to a whisper as he finishes, “I’m on the gallows, here, Elide. And you’ve left me standing here for so long. End it or forgive me.”

Tears slip from her eyes, but she doesn’t make a move to wipe them away. Instead, she slips from the bed. “Would you excuse me, for a moment?” She pads out of the room before he can respond and he can hear the sink turn on, then, the sound of an electric toothbrush.

He should just leave. The two of them already had their scratching, screaming, crying breakup. They didn’t need a second. Lorcan honestly didn’t know if he’d survive it. Returning to sit on the bed, he falls onto his back, staring at her ceiling fan. He doesn’t blink, letting his vision swim out of focus. 

When Elide inserts her face back into his field of vision, he says the thing that’s been on his mind since he saw the state of her kitchen, felt her ribs through her shirt. “You’ve lost weight.”

She throws her body down next to him on the bed, heaving a sigh. “You still worry about me.”

“For the rest of my days, probably.”

He can hear the rustle of fabric as she turns her head, but he doesn’t meet her gaze, afraid of what he’ll find there. “Did you mean it before, what you said? You still…”

She trails off, so he fills in for her. “Love you?” Again, he hears her nod rather than sees it. “Yeah. I do.”

“There hasn’t been anyone else, Lorcan. Not really. Not in any way that matters.”

Now, he turns to look at her, their faces close enough he could connect her freckles into constellations. “Why?”

Her lower lip trembles for a moment and it takes everything shred of self control not to close the minuscule space between them and capture it between his own. “Because I don’t _want_ to. The thought of anyone else, it’s too much to bear.”

“You have to let me go.”

“No.”

“Elide-”

“ _No_ . You said always. You said you’d be with me always. And I know I said I didn’t want that, that I couldn’t want that, but I _lied_. So, no. I pushed you away, but I won’t let you go. I love you, too, you great big oaf. I am sorry that I hurt you.” Fingers ghost over the back of his hand where it rests on the comforter, before twisting into his own, locking them together. 

Lorcan raises the hand that is not tangled with hers and cups her cheek. “I’m sorry, for everything. For what I did to Aelin, for the things I said. You have to know I’m sorry.”

Her face turns and she presses her lips into his palm. “I didn’t mean it when I said I didn’t care what happened to you. We’ve both said awful things.”

“Can you say it again?” Lorcan whispers, lifting himself up onto a forearm so he can lean over her. 

The smallest smile curves her lips. “I love you, Lorcan.”

He has to shut his eyes for a moment, taking a shuddering breath into his lungs. When he opens his eyes again, she’s still watching him, but his eyes zero in on her lower lip trapped between her teeth. 

“Gods, can I kiss you, please?” Only for Elide, would he beg, only for her. 

Another knowing smile. “I was afraid I was going to have to beg you-” 

She doesn’t get the chance to finish that thought as he sweeps in and covers her mouth with his own. It starts slow, soft brushes as he relearns the shape of her mouth beneath him. He tangles the fingers of his free hand through her hair, effectively tying them together. 

When her tongue makes an exploratory sweep across his lower lips, Lorcan lets the leash on his wanting slip, looming over her frame to settle half on top of her. He is rewarded with a breathy gasp that sounds like his name.

A gentle tug on her hair has Elide bearing her throat to him without hesitation. As he lowers his mouth to her pulse point, her hands slide into his hair, scraping against his scalp in a way that makes his hips jerk against hers. He can feel her chuckle against his lips and responds with a sharp nip. 

“Not nice,” he growls, trailing open mouth kisses over the thin skin under her jaw, sucking just hard enough to maybe leave a mark. 

“I never said I was nice.” Her voice is breathless and hoarse, suddenly reminding Lorcan of all her body has been through in the last twenty four hours. 

He kisses back up to her face, taking a moment to drag his teeth over her earlobe, which causes her hips to cant beneath him. Punctuating each word with a kiss, he says, “My… devious… lying… beautiful… queen.”

Lorcan makes himself pull away, unwinding his fingers from her hair to grasp the hand that she is currently trailing down his chest. They are both panting, breath mingling between them. 

“Sleep, Elide. You need to sleep.”

Eyes, dark with wanting, stare back at him, a question lingering there. 

“I’ll be here when you wake. I promise. You need to rest. Then, you need some food. Then, I think, you’ll be ready for the way I intend to absolutely ravish you.”

Despite their familiarity and the way they’re currently tangled together, a hot blush glows on her cheeks and Lorcan cannot help himself when he leans in one more time to brush a kiss to each spot of color. “Sleep now, baby. Under the covers.” She follows his command without hesitation, slipping beneath the comforter and settling back against the pillows, dark hair a halo around her. 

Once she’s cocooned comfortably, Lorcan moves in beside her, tucking his long frame around her body, her head beneath his chin. She’s still stiff in his arms, so he asks, “Yes, Elide?”

Against his chest, her voice is muffled. “Can you say it again?”

His throat constricts so sharply he has to bury his face in her hair for a moment and collect himself. When he answers, his voice is still rough with emotion. “I love you, Elide. I love you so gods-damned much.”

The tension in her body melts away. “I missed this.”

As she drifts off, Lorcan hears the unspoken words. 

_I missed you._

**Author's Note:**

> well, this one got away from me. i originally planned on having both elide and lorcan have respective perspectives, but i just really, really love writing Worried!Lorcan, so 1000 words suddenly became 3000, whoops. it also went in an entirely different direction than i thought it was going to, but characters have a mind of their own sometimes. 
> 
> (also, a p.s., i know food poisoning isn't over in like three hours for most people, but i had a story to tell and there's only so much barfing a girl wants to write about. elorcan content was way more important.)
> 
> this was proofread and edited by yours truly, so any mistakes are my own.
> 
> anyways, much love in advance for any kudos or comments. And, as always, thanks for reading my words. 
> 
> come hang with me on [tumblr](https://the-dark-swan.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
